


A Father's Inheritence

by MyDaedricGravemind



Category: Assassins Creed-pre Syndicate
Genre: Ethan's final moments, Gen, very short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 10:14:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5782219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyDaedricGravemind/pseuds/MyDaedricGravemind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do we have in this life but what we live and leave behind?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Father's Inheritence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> I listen to music as I read, it helps to 'keep the mood'. For this piece I listened to (over and over) Keaton Henson's-You, covered by Natalie Lungley. It was more then inspirational.

~

 

Ethan thrashes about on his deathbed in agony, struggling to breathe. He has but few days left, and as the scythe approaches to kiss him goodnight, he grabs Brother George by the arm with a final plea.

“Don’t-let them come up here, George...they shouldn’t see me like this...”

George shakes his head, understanding what his friend means by ‘them’. His children, the only family he has left. “But Ethan—”

Ethan painfully shakes his head. “..They’ll see enough death in time...mine is not one...I want them to remember me by-”

But to his agony he hears the bedroom doors ease open, even as his straining senses peaked at the presense of his blood and flesh. George grips him carfully and Ethan hears him admonish the children, that they were not to enter until summoned.

His daughter, he now sees through tear scorched eyes, pushes her chin upward and says it is their right and responsibility to see their father into the life that awaits those who pass on in death. Ethan chokes on unbidden emotion and a fit of terrible hackings rip a sobbing cry from him.

"..leave-th'm..." He whispers brokanly to George, his eyes- always so full of pride, duty, and the bitterness of a hard life- wept in a sad despair of his failures and regrets. That his torturous death was to be the last thing his children knew him by, that their mother had also passed in the most unholy of pain and he was to leave them in the same. Did they even love him to grieve when he was gone?

George looked as if he wasnt sure what Ethan's last wishes had been; his face wearing his inner turmoil aloud, his voice cracking. "I am sorry-"

"-geor-g-" Ethan's fits shook him without mercy, the flaming pain clawing him open from the inside out. He gasped desperatly, his condition near beyond words. "-ge-out...!"

Jacob now stepped forward, his throat bobbing up and down as he struggled with himself as to what to do. His son- so like his dear wife and the boy's poor mother, rent him with such rememberance with every witty word and batted eye lash. His own son the living, breathing image of Ethan's love, Cecily, that he had unknowing punished the boy all his young life for the crime.

George released him carefully and bowed. Before leaving he pushed the two children forward towards Ethan then left, the sound of the doors softly closing behind him as his final farewell to his lifelong friend and mentor.

Evie stepped dutifully to her fathers right side and Jacob, almost fearful, stepped to his left. Ethan swallowed wrechedly, his throat convulsing as he labored to keep the fits at bay...at least a while longer so he may look upon his children in his final moments.

In the end- He remembers - we are always, truly alone.

His moist mouth parts to form their names, to say them with the love he bears but Fate betrays his wishes and he is chastised brutaly for the faint attempt, his countinence twisting in the silent horror of agony and regret.

Evie, her dear little mouth, puckered slightly so very like her mother's, clenches tightly before she graspes his right hand. She should have feared it could crush her small hands in the desparation of his fear and pain, but she hangs on tightly as if she were his only lifeline.

Jacob, tremers clenching his hunched shoulders numbly mirrors the image, taking Ethans hot, fevered hand in his cool touch. It is his touch that comforts him as it feels how he imagined his own cool grip on his wifes burning skin so long ago...

Did his touch comfort her as her son-their son's comforts him now?

Time swept by with a cruel speed and vigor, his fevered skin dry and hot as he was lost timeless in the waves of boiling breathlessness and torturous spasms of bloodied breath that became the seconds he counted...even to his last.

"...eviee-jac-ob-" He clutches them desparatly, his sticky, bulging eyes tearing the very ceiling down to save him from the drowning death he could not save himself from.

"Give your soul to death in peace, father-"  
Evie's quiet voice is gripped in grief and love-he can hear it sweetly though; it is like a candle in the darkness he was to helplessly fall to.  
"-As in life, death; that by both, we may find all. Pax vobiscum."

Jacob was still as stone, the sides of his fading vision catching the glint of the white of the boy's eyes.

Ethan Frye tears a final gasp from this life-

And in the sweeping curtain of white that envelopes him, he enters into the next...

~


End file.
